Sensitivity and resolution are important parameters that pose a significant challenge in using microwave microfluidic sensors to monitor low-concentration binary liquid mixtures. This work presents a microwave split-ring resonator (SRR) sensor equipped with a substrate-embedded fluidic channel and an active feedback loop to enhance sensitivity and resolution, respectively. The substrate-embedded channel eliminated the impact of the liquid-carrying tubes’ wall and maintained a significant interaction between the liquid in the channel and the electromagnetic (EM) field confined between the SRR and ground plane. Therefore, embedding the channel inside the substrate of the SRR sensor, operating at 2.63 GHz, enhanced the sensitivity by 60%. The constructive energy from the active feedback loop boosted the quality factor of the passive SRR by over $100\times $ (from 116 to 13 000), which significantly enhanced the resolution of the sensor. As a proof of concept, two prototypes of the sensor having different substrate-embedded channels with cross-sectional diameters of 1 and 0.762 mm were fabricated and used to detect low concentrations of ethanol (0–0.08 vol%) and salt (0–200 mM) in water. Embedding the channel inside the substrate of the active SRR sensor achieved a linear correlation ( $R^{2} = 0.99$ ) between the resonant frequency and the concentration of ethanol and salt in water with high sensitivity (19.95 MHz/vol% for ethanol and 4.35 kHz/mM for salt) and resolution (0.001 vol% for ethanol and 2.298 mM for salt). The achieved results demonstrate the feasibility of using the active SRR microwave sensor with a substrate-embedded channel for monitoring ethanol in fermentation broths and electrolytes in human sweat.

This paper presents a planar microwave sensor for the sensitive and accurate characterization of complex permittivity of solid materials. To realize the proposed sensor, the combination of a parallel interdigital capacitor and a dual wide gap resonator was etched on the ground plane and coupled with a transmission line in the top plane of a printed circuit board. The main advantage of the proposed sensor configuration lies in the generation of a high-intensity coupled resonating electric field suitable for the sensitive measurement of complex permittivity of solid materials. The high-intensity electric field enhances the coupling and field interaction, and thereby produces a high-accuracy permittivity characterization of a solid material exposed to the maximum field of the proposed sensor. Our developed microwave permittivity sensor, which characterized the complex permittivity of several materials by exploiting the measured shifts in resonance frequencies, exhibited a high sensitivity (up to 37% shift in resonance frequency for 20% change in permittivity) at least 1.5 times higher than previously reported microwave permittivity sensors. In addition, the proposed sensor exhibited 99.9% and 99.7% sensing accuracies for real and imaginary parts of permittivity, respectively, and the measurement results revealed an excellent (0.06758) and high sensitivity (67.58 MHz per unit change in real permittivity).

This paper presents an interdigital capacitor (IDC)-based high sensitivity microwave sensor for the multidimensional (complex permittivity and thickness) characterization of solid materials. The proposed sensor was implemented by etching a slot resonator with an IDC on the ground layer of 0.76 mm-thick RF-35 substrate with relative permittivity of 3.5 and loss tangent of 0.0018. The IDC fingers were configured as a spur-line structure to create an intense electric field zone that interacted significantly with the material under test (MUT), resulting in high sensitivity. A sensor prototype with optimized dimensions generated dual resonant frequencies of 2.35 GHz and 5.79 GHz and was used to measure the MUT’s complex permittivity and thickness, respectively. Experimental results revealed that the resonant frequencies of the developed sensor exhibited high sensitivities (276 MHz/ $\varepsilon _{r}$ for permittivity and 143 MHz/mm for thickness) and resolutions (0.27678 for permittivity and 0.1439 for thickness) of solid materials. Moreover, the sensing accuracies were 99.9% for real permittivity and 97.7% for imaginary permittivity. The demonstrated high performance of the developed sensor validates its applications in the multidimensional characterization of various solid materials.

Simultaneous characterization of permittivity and permeability of magnetodielectric materials using a single resonator-based microwave sensor is challenging due to their similar impacts on the sensor’s response. This work presents an interdigital structure-based planar microwave resonator sensor featuring high-intensity electric (E)-field zones and magnetic (M)-field zones to characterize permittivity and permeability. The proposed sensor’s sensing E-field and M-field zones were implemented using the interdigital fingers configured as a spur line structure and interdigital electrodes, respectively, generating a 5.9-GHz resonance frequency with a high Q-factor (1700). The resonance frequency of the designed sensor exhibited high sensitivities (324 MHz/ $\Delta \varepsilon _{r}$ for permittivity and 825 MHz/ $\Delta \mu _{r}$ for permeability) for characterizing single/multilayers magnetodielectric materials with excellent resolutions (0.324 for permittivity and 0.825 for permeability). The demonstrated high sensitivity and resolution results validate the performance of the interdigital structure-based microwave resonator sensor for simultaneous characterization of multilayer magnetodielectric materials.

This letter presents a microwave sensor based on an electric-inductor capacitor (ELC) resonator structure interfaced with 2-D transition-metal carbides (Ti $_{3}$ C $_{2}$ T $_{x}$ MXene) for ultrasensitive monitoring of relative humidity (RH). The sensing zone utilizes an interdigitated pattern combined with an MXene film to enhance field distribution, which creates a larger contact area for more sensitive humidity detection. The binding energy of water molecules is estimated high on the surface of the designed sensor via MXene-OH termination using density functional theory (DFT) simulation, which depicts a small bond length. In addition, the resonant frequency of the developed sensor resonates at 4.1 GHz, which linearly changes with the RH ranging from 10% to 90% with a high sensitivity of 1.04 MHz/%RH and 30 mdB/%RH. The sensor’s maximum relative standard deviation (RSD) of 0.011% and 0.120% with a low standard deviation value exhibit the repeatability of the designed humidity sensor. Thus, the achieved results validate the performance of the developed MXene-coated microwave resonator sensor for humidity monitoring applications demanding high sensitivity.